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Facebook owner Meta has agreed to pay $1.4bn to the state of Texas to settle claims that the company harvested millions of citizens’ biometric data without proper consent.
The settlement, to be paid over five years, is the largest ever obtained from an action brought by a single US state, said a statement from attorney-general Ken Paxton.
It also marks one of the largest penalties levied at Meta by regulators, second only to a $5bn settlement it paid the US Federal Trade Commission in 2019 for the misuse of user data in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal.
The original complaint, filed by Paxton in February 2022, accused Facebook’s now-closed facial recognition system of collecting biometric identifiers of “millions of Texans” from photos and videos posted on the platform without “informed consent”, in breach of a 2009 state law governing the capture or use of biometrics.
Meta launched a feature in 2011 called “tag suggestions” that recommended to users who to tag in photos and videos, by scanning the “facial geometry” of those pictured, Paxton’s office said.
The complaint accused Facebook of violating Texas state law “not hundreds, or thousands, or millions of times — but billions of times”, with at least $10,000 in civil penalties being sought for each violation.
In 2021, a year before the lawsuit was filed, Meta announced it was shuttering its facial recognition system including the tag suggestions feature. It wiped the biometric data it had collected from 1bn users, citing legal “uncertainty”.
The latest fine comes amid growing concern globally over privacy and data protection risks related to facial recognition, as well as algorithmic bias, although legislation is patchy, differing from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
In 2021, Facebook agreed to pay a $650mn settlement in a class-action lawsuit in Illinois under a state privacy law over similar allegations related to its face-tagging system.
Paxton’s office has a similar and ongoing privacy lawsuit against Alphabet’s Google, accusing the search platform of collecting millions of biometric identifiers through its products and services, which include Google Photos and Google Assistant.
“This historic settlement demonstrates our commitment to standing up to the world’s biggest technology companies and holding them accountable for breaking the law and violating Texans’ privacy rights,” Paxton said in a statement. “Any abuse of Texans’ sensitive data will be met with the full force of the law.”
Meta had previously said that the claims were without merit. According to a statement from law firm and co-counsel McKool Smith, the company and Texas agreed to settle the lawsuit on the evening before a trial was set to begin in mid-June, having asked to pause the proceedings whilst terms were finalised.
A spokesperson for Meta said on Tuesday: “We are pleased to resolve this matter, and look forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potentially developing data centres.”
